LL-L: "Language politics" 15.JUL.2000 (04) [E/S]

Sun Jul 16 01:55:38 UTC 2000

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From: Sandy Fleming [sandy at scotstext.org]
Subject: "Language politics"

> From: Colin Wilson [lcwilson at iee.org]
> Subject: LL-L: "Language politics" LOWLANDS-L, 14.JUL.2000 (06) [E]
>
> In the case of Welsh, the people who made sacrifices could do so
knowing
> that the bulk of Welsh-speaking public opinion was behind what they
> were aiming for, even if not necessarily behind how they went about
> it.
>
> With Scots, as far as I can see, we simply don't know what
Scots-speaking
> public opinion is, regarding issues such as road signs and the
census.
> As far as I know, no-one has investigated it in any great depth.
Perhaps
> this is a first step that we ought to take, a survey of public
attitudes
> to the official promotion of Scots.

And how is this going to be done? Just today on the ScotsLang mailing
list
Stuart McHardy posted a response to the signage question saying that
a few
years ago some papers and proposals were made up concerning signage
in
Scots. These have since lain idle in the SLRC library in Perth.

Again, when I started posting to Lowlands-L five years ago, the
spelling
comittee was in its death throes and nothing has been done since -
and
public declarations have been made that nothing will be done in the
foreseeable future.

Meanwhile we see from John Tait's postings that a language can be
wiped out
in a generation, while we start our survey of public attitudes to
leave
lying in Perth with the signage documents and the ghosts of departed
orthographers.

> As regards refusing to complete census forms, to do so would be a
> breach of the law. The Scots-speaking heartland of the
rural/coastal
> north-east is one of the most upright and law-abiding regions of
Britain,
> and probably of Europe. Support for any form of illegal protest
would be
> very limited here, regardless of people's views on the issue
itself.

To explain the census problem for those who haven't come across it
before -
the interesting thing about the language question on the census
(probably
any national census) is that it involves statistical fudging. The
question
is a matter of ticking your native language, and languages that it
would be
a hassle for the government to include in its educational system are
simply
not offered as a category. This is criminal activity on the part of
the
government, which in the United Kingdom is legal since no British
citizen is
granted any human rights at all under English or Scots law.

Unfortunately, the statistical fudging in the census is
self-sustaining,
since to most citizens it somehow seems reasonable for the government
to
ignore languages that aren't taught as part of the national
curriculum. Yet
it seems likely that if the government actually put Scots as an
option, at
least a million people would recognise it and gleefully tick the
truth about
themselves. To the British government, this would be an
administrative and
political headache.

> In the case of Welsh, the people who made sacrifices could do so
knowing
> that the bulk of Welsh-speaking public opinion was behind what they
> were aiming for, even if not necessarily behind how they went about
> it.

The most heavily populated areas of Wales are English-speaking, and
in fact,
the fruits of Welsh activism are a perpetual inconvenience and source
of
annoyance, sometimes outrage, in the most heavily populated areas -
Cardiff,
Newport, Monmouth, Cheptsow &c.

The major events in modern Welsh language activism happened at a time
when
Welsh-speakers themselves were going the way of the Cornish and Norns
in
bringing up their children as English speakers. This has resulted in
the
common phenomenon in Wales today where young people (in their 20s)
and their
grandparents are native Welsh speakers but the parents only speak
English,
the grandparents having regretted their folly in bringing up their
children
in English and insisted on their grandchildren going to Welsh
schools. But
why have the grandparents turned in this way? Only because of the
results of
the efforts of individual Welsh language activists who fought against
the
ignorance and indifference of the majority of Welsh speakers.

Make no mistake, if the Welsh language activists had gone on the
results of
a survey, there would be no Welsh Language Act, no Welsh television
channel,
and a rapidly diminishing population of Welsh speakers. The majority
of
people in Wales today seem to have accepted that continued existence
of the
Welsh language is worth certain inconveniences, though there are
plenty who
would like to see the whole thing regionalised instead of
inconveniencing
the whole country.

What's the point in doing a survey on a population who are
deliberately kept
in ignorance of their heritage by an educational system that
constantly
drums into them the fact that English is their first language even
although
it's clearly at odds with the way they speak at home? Where these
days it
isn't even always at odds with the way they speak at home any more,
because
their parents have been through a system that's taught them that
their
children should be spoken to in English? The authorities have already
won on
the public opinion stakes thourgh their educational system.

> I'm very surprised to see Sandy using the word "whingeing". This is
> a word usually used only by people who would prefer issues not to
> be discussed, and who would deny others the right even to complain.

What I meant by whingeing was not "drink your milk, no discussion"
(sorry, I
watched "Leon" last night!), I meant complaining without doing (see
above
about signage and spelling committee).

> Is that really Sandy's attitude here? Democracy is at least
supposed
> to be based on people making their views known to leaders, who are
> supposed to act accordingly. We saw that it didn't work, but wasn't
> it worth a try?

Though, as you know Colin, what we've got in Britain isn't a
democracy, but
an unwritten constitution consisting of a system of "accepted
conventions"
that the government can and does change at any time. And as long as
the
government have set up public opinion properly (as they've done with
the
Scots-speaking population) they can rewrite those conventions to suit
themselves.

I would say that the job of a Scots language activist is to reveal to
the
populace the truth about themselves, not to follow the opinions of a
populace who have already been indoctrinated into wiping out the
language.

Ye can see A'v got ma spurtle oot the day!

However, having said all that, I can see a survey being a useful tool
if the
problem of educational indoctrination is somehow circumvented. One
interesting possibilty would be an attempt to find the truth about
the
census question. However, a straightforward approach would be
inadequate: if
we simply avoided statistical fudging by asking, "What's your native
language?" then I would think indoctrination would come into play and
most
people would simply write "English". But by including a copy of the
census
language question on the survey with Scots as an option we could see
how
people would react to the fudged census question if the government
were to
de-fudge it, and use this as a weapon in getting the question on the
next
survey.

Another possibility would be to ask a "meta-question", ie ask a
question
such that many people aren't aware that they're answering a question.
For
example, could we persuade a Scottish company sending out its routine
surveys to do them with three separate but equivalent sections in
English/Scots/Gaelic, and see which proportion answer using the Scots
section? This way we wouldn't even have to worry about funding!

And finally having said _that_ you need to remember that for a survey
to be
any use at all it has to be done by experts, and these are usually
professionals. Look at the difficulties Shere Hite got into with her
DIY
efforts! Perhaps some Scottish university department could provide
such
services?

Sandy
http://scotstext.org
  Things in this subloonary warld bein far frae
perfeck, 'No that bad' is the maist that mortal
man can venture tae say while here ablo.
             - Catherine P. Slater, 'Marget Pow'

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